


Poison

by Potboy



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25265407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potboy/pseuds/Potboy
Summary: Eol broods on the poison of the Noldor.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Poison

**Author's Note:**

> A podfic of this story is available at [Poison](https://www.spreaker.com/user/galadhir/maeglinpoison) on Spreaker or on the podfic app of your choice.

I hear his laughter ring in the hollows of my house, and it is as though the stars had returned to Nan Elmoth. It makes me think, as so many things do, of my wife's folk. First they took the sky from us. Did they wait to ask whether we wanted the scorching blaze of sunshine, the corpse-pallor of the moon? Did they stop to think that some of us adored the sharp glance of the stars; the remote holiness, the cool darkness and spattered sparkle of silver light, like laughter?

No, they asked not. Nor would they have cared. When they poisoned our beautiful sky they expected us to be grateful.

Then they took our land. They are all too eager to sing of the splendours of their own country, and to heap ugly names on this. Arda Marred! 'Galadhremmin Ennorath' - the tangled web of trees. It heats me with fury as the gledes of the forge. If they hate it so much, why could they not have left it to those of us who loved it? We loved it as it was. Yet they took it, and they expected us to be grateful.

So when she came, white as the moon, white as the marble cities under whose weight the land groans, it seemed fair that she should give me back something of the joy her people stole from me. She was not unwilling, but she expected - as is the way of these folk - to use me for a while and then cast me aside. An adventure, an interesting diversion in a life where only her own people truly mattered to her.

Did I forbid her to go to Doriath? If she wanted light and company she might have had it there. If my son desired playmates more exalted than our servants, or the dwarves, she might take him there with my blessing. But no, she shuts him in her room and tells him things that make the bright, piercing gaze of his eyes turn sullen, and his childish voice - which used to blaze with wonder like pouring steel over our works together - fall into dull silence.

I am not a fool. I know she is luring his heart from mine, filling his head with resentment. I should never have met her at the door, never smiled, never opened my heart and home and let her in. She is as poisonous as the rest. It is not enough that they stole our sky, they stole our world. Now she wants to steal my flesh and blood, of all my works the one I love the most. She wants to take my child.

But she will not.

Let her go, if she must go. I am not her jailer. I thought to spare her from their curse, but if she desires it so much she will sacrifice our marriage for it, so be it.

But she will not have my son. My boy, my Maeglin, my starlight. She will not have him. The Noldor will not have him. They took everything else, but they shall not take him. We will die together, if it is the only way, for I love him, and I will keep him. He is _mine_.


End file.
